MBDA board: why we were kicked out

Court papers lay bare the conflict between directors and municipality

THE former board of the Mandela Bay Development Agency (MBDA) took its war with the municipality to court yesterday, claiming a relentless, illegal campaign by the city to purge them for refusing to give in to undue instructions by mayor Danny Jordaan.

Port Elizabeth Advocate Luvuyo Bono, and businessmen Motse Mfuleni, Lucky Gosani and Samkelo Dlulane, filed an urgent application at the Port Elizabeth High Court, hoping for an order to stop the municipality from replacing the board next week.

They also want the court to set aside the decision to dissolve the board.

The papers were filed in the morning, at the same time that acting city manager Johann Mettler told a gathering of business and media people that municipal bosses were gearing up to appoint a new board by Thursday.

At a media and stakeholders breakfast meeting at the old Tramways building, Mettler said those interested in serving as directors of the MBDA board had until today to submit their nominations.

The city’s leadership would then sift through the nominations on Monday and submit a final list to the full council by Thursday.

“We are going to have that process concluded by April 21,” he said.

“It is important for us to deal with this matter quickly.

“We have sent out letters to the ex-board members to say ‘please don’t exclude yourself, apply’, because it was never about them.”

Mettler was not aware at the time of the court application.

However, he confirmed later that municipal lawyers had been served with the court papers and would be filing opposing papers.

The power struggle between the two parties is likely to cause further ructions in an already divided ANC, with some of the businessmen taking on Jordaan and the municipality known to be major activists and funders of the ANC in the metro.

The businessmen say their fight is not about money – board members do not get paid – but about the reputational damage to themselves as industry players.

In the papers, the four board members stated that the board had been dissolved because it refused to renew former chief executive Pierre Voges’s contract, despite repeated requests from municipal bosses to do so.

The chief executive’s job is crucial as whoever leads the MBDA is in charge of some of the Bay’s biggest development projects.

The court documents contain confidential e-mails between city bosses and members of the board.

They also contain minutes of meetings, claims of political interference in the running of the metro’s most prized agency and other statements that were made.

The court papers paint a detailed picture of an ugly power struggle, which began the day Voges told the board in November that his contract would end last month.

In his affidavit, Bono said that when informing the board via e-mail about his contract, Voges had written that he did not need the work but had been asked by Jordaan to stay on.

“I expressed my concern that the mayor had requested Dr Voges to stay on as such conduct would result in interference with the board’s prerogative,” Bono wrote.

The board believed that Voges’s contract could not simply be renewed, and that the job had to be re-advertised and Voges could apply if he wished.

According to the court papers, deputy mayor Bicks Ndoni, who led the negotiation process on behalf of the municipality, told the board in subsequent meetings that Jordaan wanted Voges to stay on until after the local government elections.

Bono said in his affidavit that he had then learnt from Mettler that the mayor, in fact, wanted Voges to stay on for a year after the elections, which the board had refused.

Bono said it was at this point, on February 29, that Mettler had told him in a meeting at the city manager’s office that refusing the request had left the municipality with no other option but to dissolve the board.

He said he had been told the decision was based on a legal opinion the municipality had obtained some time ago but not implemented.

This was the first time he had heard of the legal opinion, which alluded to the fact that the board was not legally constituted as it was never rubber-stamped by the council when it was first appointed by the former mayor in 2014.

Because Jordaan was on the board before being appointed mayor, Bono said he did not understand the claim that it was improperly constituted.

He said in the affidavit that while the board had continued to reject the request to renew Voges’s contract, they had later agreed to renew it on a month-to-month basis.

Bono stated that on March 22 he was called by Jordaan to a meeting at the mayor’s home.

At this meeting, he told Jordaan that the board had never been told of any concerns about its legitimacy until the disagreement about Voges’s job arose.

He said Jordaan had told him he thought that the matter had been discussed with the board at a January 16 meeting.

“At this point, the mayor called Ndoni and put him on speaker phone,” Bono said.

“He asked him if the issue of the appointment of the directors ... had been raised at the meeting of January 16.

“Mr Ndoni confirmed that the issue had not been raised.

“The mayor and his deputy then had an argument about whether the issue of the board should have been raised at the meeting on January 16 or not.

“The deputy mayor was adamant that it was not raised ... and actually contended that the mayor had requested him not to raise the issue. The mayor denied this.”

Bono said Jordaan had then said he would ask Mettler to meet the board to find a solution.

Instead, they had received a letter from Mettler informing them the city had undertaken a legal process to “regularise” the board and that they were not to hold any meetings. The board fought this. The board members received letters later inviting them to a meeting to discuss the dissolution of the board.

The letters gave them a weekend to prepare and attend a meeting.

Bono said in the affidavit that this did not adhere to the 15-day notice period prescribed by law.

He said when they were invited to the meeting, the agenda had included a discussion on the Voges matter.

On their arrival at the meeting, however, Ndoni had told them that the agenda of the meeting had been changed, that the Voges matter would not be discussed and that the only reason on the table for the removal of the board was its compliance issue.

They asked to discuss the matter the following day, but Ndoni told them a decision had already been taken by the caucus to remove the board.

“They were at the meeting to pass the resolution,” Bono wrote.

At this point, Ndoni had asked that the directors leave the room for the proposal to be considered.

“To say that we were very upset is an understatement,” he wrote.

“At this point, I indicated that I had conveyed my own position quite clearly to them, which they had high-handedly disregarded, and there was therefore nothing more for me to say.

“I was appalled that a decision to remove the directors had already been taken in caucus convened earlier and that the meeting we were invited to was merely a facade to rubber-stamp a pre-approved decision to that effect. “The conduct of the municipality was unlawful on additional grounds, because not only did the municipal representatives not transparently ... consult with us, but no proper notice had been given and no voting had taken place.”

According to the Municipal Systems Act, board directors can only be removed if their performance is unsatisfactory, if they are ill or unable to perform their duties, or if the director has been convicted of fraud or breached legislation in terms of conduct.

The MBDA is listed as a third respondent in the case.

MBDA spokesman Luvuyo Bangazi said: “We have received notification that an application may be made by some of the former MBDA directors.

“The application has not yet been received and will be dealt with upon receipt thereof.”